The Ponder Nook

     Well, it’s that time of year again. The days are growing shorter, a crisp chill lingers in the air, Halloween decor floods stores, and pumpkin spice is back in every cafe across the country. Yep, this can mean only one thing; election season is back again!            Okay, so perhaps that’s not exactly what most people are anticipating with the arrival of autumn, but the biannual run up to the November elections are still happening whether we want them to or not. Luckily, there is no presidential election this year, and instead we can focus more on our local representation in our states and communities. One election that I am quite invested in this go around is for a US Senate seat representing Utah. The current incumbent, Republican Mike Lee, is making a bid for a third six-year term while his main challenger is an Independent candidate by the name of Evan McMullin. With that said, I would like to share my personal endorse...

          The recent overturn of the Roe versus Wade case has been on my mind long before the actual decision to undo it even occurred. Ever since the SCOTUS tipped to a conservative majority, I knew it was only a matter of time before this would eventually happen. I would like to share my take on this landmark reversal and what I believe it will mean for this country moving forward. To begin, let’s evaluate what the overturn of Roe vs. Wade actually means. The decision to repel the 1973 decision removes the constitutional right to receive an abortion, which safeguarded the practice in all states for nearly fifty years. Striking down Roe, however, does not make abortion unconstitutional, or illegal on the federal level, but gives states the ability to restrict access or expand it, which is what is currently happening across the red and blue divide. Only those living in red states will feel the effects of this decision. Abortions will still be widely availab...

          Recently there have been a couple of stories circulating in the news that have me pondering a sensitive issue in today’s world; transgender athletes in sports. Firstly, there is the controversy around University of Pennsylvania’s trans-woman swimmer, Lia Thomas who won first place in the women’s 500-yard freestyle in the NCAA championship. Second, Utah governor Spencer Cox vetoed a bill to ban trans-athletes from competing in sports in the Public Education System. These two coinciding stories brought me to question more about what it means for transgender students to participate in athletic programs, and whether it is fair for cisgender girls.  Before I get into the meat of this topic, I’d like to spend a moment going over terminology so everyone can be on the same page: What is gender? Gender seems to have two different ways of being defined. One definition says that gender is simply another word that means sex, i.e. the male/female divisi...

We live in a day and age where misinformation and the manipulation of information is running rampant across the world at large. Whether it is hurried news articles that weren’t fact checked, conspiracy theories pushed by zealous politicians and pundits, or viral social media posts concocted by internet trolls, we are confronted by an onslaught of baseless or manipulated news that has engulfed people of all walks of life.  Fortunately, there are tools we can utilize in sifting through the mire of falsehoods and half truths, and that is the combined might of an open mind and critical thinking. Maintaining an open mind allows us to consider all options when information is presented to us, while critical thinking skills gives us the ability to question the legitimacy of the news that we digest. The enemy of this logical strategy is bias. As human beings, we have the tendency to be completely open-minded concerning ideas and perspectives we already agree on or are invested in, and overt...

The Super Bowl has become an unofficial holiday in the United States, and beyond. People gather together at the homes of friends and family or bars and pubs to partake in a raiment of chips, dips, burgers and excessive amounts of alcohol or soda pop while cheering on their favorite football team as they compete for the title of champion for that year. As for myself, I’ve never been entirely interested in watching sports. I root for my Utah Jazz basketball team whenever they make it into the playoffs, but I still don’t like to watch the games mainly because they give me crazy amounts of anxiety, which I can’t entirely explain, but have always felt that it derives from the double finals defeat of the Jazz when I was a kid in the 90’s .                At this point, you must be thinking, what does any of this have to do with Lord of the Rings? Well, bare with me, I’m getting there.      Though I don’t care much for watching the ...

“Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is and saw Virtue in her shape how lovely: and pined his loss.” - Paradise Lost, 1667.          In the epic poem, Paradise Lost, John Milton reexamines the Genesis story of Adam and Eve along with an in-depth interpretation into Satan and his motive as the biblical events play out. What I find interesting is that, having grown up a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, we are taught that the fall of Adam was God's plan all along, and that it was necessary for humans to fall in order to "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth"; but in this version, as well as most mainstream Christian belief, the Fall of Man is considered a great tragedy that could have been avoided if our primordial ancestors would have only listened to God's commandment not to partake of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. In the latter interpretation, I find it strange that God seems to be so ...

  What does it mean to be human? On the surface it doesn't seem like a very complex question. Clearly there are major differences between us and the rest of the animal kingdom. We have opposable thumbs coupled with fine motor skills that help us manipulate our environments, elaborate languages and ways of communicating measurement such as math and science, the ability to understand the past, present, and future, aesthetic appreciation of art, and technological capabilities all make the differences a stark contrast. In my mind, however, everything I brought up are mere branches of a trunk that serves as the core of everything else. The core that I speak of is consciousness.  All living things have consciousness to some degree. Even early micro-organisms had a basic environmental consciousness that told them to swim to the surface of the ocean for sunlight in order to photosynthesize, and to dive down deeper when it became too hot. Human consciousness, on the other hand, is far ...